E3 '07: DiRT Hands-On

We test-drive a near-finished PS3 version of Codemasters' off-road racer at E3 2007.

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Earlier today, during a meeting with Codemasters, we had an opportunity to check out the PlayStation 3 version of DiRT. Currently scheduled for release in August or early September, the game won't do anything that its already-available Xbox 360 counterpart doesn't, but it'll purportedly benefit from some noticeable improvements.

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The word "optimization" was used more times than we care to remember during our meeting. In the months since the Xbox 360 game's release, the development team has had an opportunity to get the PS3 version's frame rate a lot closer to the steady 30 frames per second that it should've been on Xbox 360. We can't say for certain whether or not the frame rate is consistent throughout the whole game at this point, but we didn't notice any drops during the three races that we tried out, so that bodes well.

There really isn't much else to say about the PS3 version of DiRT that we haven't already said about the Xbox 360 game, except that it'll benefit from uncompressed 7:1 surround sound, and it'll feature support for the Logitech G25 force feedback steering wheel as well as a number of older ones. Codemasters is planning to release a playable demo of DiRT on the PlayStation Network a few weeks before shipping the game, so keep an eye out for that one and for a full review in a month or two.